Ontario lawmakers wish to shut the loopholes permitting some employers to benefit from their employees.
Over the following two weeks they’ll suggest amendments to Invoice 190, often known as Working for Staff 5 Act, to supply better protections for workers.
One instance getting used is a Kitchener grocer with an in depth observe document of not paying its staff and distributors.
“Over the last five years we have been seeing waves of workers come to us about one particular employer, a grocery store in the region called Dutchies Fresh Market,” mentioned Joanna Mullen, a lawyer with Waterloo Area Neighborhood Authorized Providers.
The Dutchies story was surprising to a lot of these on the committee.
“I was absolutely blown away, realizing that it was more than a decade this has been happening,” acknowledged Jamie West, the Sudbury MPP and NDP Labour critic.
West and others on the committee mentioned it exhibits the legal guidelines at present in place aren’t robust sufficient.
“You can’t get away with wage theft for more than a decade and have the Ministry of Labor kind of put its hands in its pockets and say, ‘shucks, jeez, what can we do?’” mentioned West.
Invoice 190 at present proposes rising the utmost superb for unhealthy actors from $50,000 to $100,000.
West identified within the committee assembly that the utmost superb is never issued, so rising the superb just isn’t sufficient.
“Dutchies is a horrible example of this, there are horrible examples all across the province,” he mentioned. “There’s a lot of really great employers, but we have to hold the bad ones to account.”
In accordance with Mullen, the province ought to have the power to shutdown companies with repeat offenses.
“The ministry should have more powers to strip employers of the licenses that they need to operate a business, whether it’s their business license, a liquor license, even a driver’s license,” Mullen defined. “They need to have some ability to actually go into these companies and say: ‘You can’t do this anymore.’”
Lawmakers have one other two weeks to suggest amendments to the present laws and West promised he’d assist a legislation permitting the province to revoke a enterprise’s license.
“The Minister of Labour really should be writing legislation to give him the power to prevent this from happening,” he mentioned.
reached out to David Piccini, the Minister of Labour, however didn’t hear again by our deadline.
